Donald Trump: social networks, politics and irresponsibility
In July of last year, following a lawsuit brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute against Donald Trump for blocking a number of people from his Twitter account, there was some debate over whether he could do this, given that he had effectively turned his personal account into a public forum and the de facto voice of the White House.
If we believe, as everything seemed to indicate, that this was in fact the case, then nobody could be blocked or excluded from the account for expressing their disagreement with his policies, because this would be a threat to freedom of expression.
Yesterday, a US judge, Naomi Reice Buchwald, ruled that the president of the United States cannot block people from his Twitter account. After a rigorous investigation of how Twitter works, the judge said the president had every right to mute his critics, meaning he would not see their presumably nasty comments, but that he cannot block them, because this would not only prevent them from seeing his updates (a relative impediment, since it is enough to enter Twitter without logging in to avoid it), but also from mentioning him through their account.
What now? Presumably, nothing. The president will most likely appeal to a higher court and ignore the ruling, in the same way he ignores his own security service when they ask to inspect his smartphone — the one he uses to communicate through Twitter — to establish how secure it is and try to protect it from hacking.
This is just another example of what happens when you vote for a president with the mind of an eight-year-old, a playground bully, a spoiled, barely literate, brat and who thinks it’s funny to joke about launching nuclear strikes. The most appropriate thing I have seen about him is this app to reproduce his Twitter updates in children’s writing with a red crayon.
What else should we expect from a president who generates multi-million dollar losses for companies due to decisions taken without any kind of serious justification, which pressures the US Mail to charge companies he doesn’t like, or who pays hush money to women he has slept with. His misuse of social networks is just another symptom of his dysfunctional nature. Without doubt, the least presidential president in the history of the United States and a dire warning of the dangers of populism.
(En español, aquí)
